


The Witch

by tsoumasd



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 13:24:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17602178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsoumasd/pseuds/tsoumasd
Summary: She likes the University. There are many boys here and boys are always her weakness. There are girls too of course – girls that feel like flowers- and there are the poets, and the scientists, and the forgotten children some drag along. Yes she likes it here. She will not eat often nor a lot because she doesn’t want to be chased away. She will be good yes yes gooood. Only she is always hungry hungry haangry angry anger. She misses the stench of Death.





	The Witch

Do not trust the witch. Do NOT trust her. She she she she has ties with them. She has wings, where hands should be. She has eyes, where skin should cover. She has teeth where no teeth could ever take root. Her façade is sloppy, and it keeps sliding off.  
Once during a wretched storm, while taking shelter at the Economics Building, she forgot to put her nose into place. A boy saw; he screamed. How, he wondered, could a creature have no nose? Peculiar sight indeed. The Witch did not realize at first that she was being foolish. Mundanes and their weird fixations. What matters if a nose is that of a snake, or a wolf, or if its nostril has flowers and moss? For the boy though, it mattered. He reached for salt, he reached for iron, and the Witch laughed. And her teeth were pearly white; and beneath the ghostly image, her real, rotten blood covered deadly teeth shined, and her fat black swollen tongue flew out of her mouth and her acidic saliva spilled down her chin because she was Hungry.  
She had not Eaten. It had been a long time, a long while of pretending, of stealing in wicked deals, of tempting Fae and humans alike, of suppressing the h u n g e r. It was a ravenous feeling, a need to rampage and taste blood and flesh and bones. She craved it. Her Hunger was a black hole, a never-ending pitch growing bigger and bigger the size of a wormhole, worm hole, warm hole, warm whole. Her laugh was manic, and the boy’s blood run cold. It froze in his veins and shuttered him from within. His screams were muffled; there came no sound. Was it because she chopped off his vocal cords when his mouth opened? Was it because she swallowed his tongue when he tried to beg? Was it because she she she she has ties with THEM?  
The Fae protect. They protect and cheat and steal and their goal is, usually, to own, and tear, and eat as well. But they fear the witch. For the Witch is ancient, older than the dragon that sleeps under the chemistry labs. She was there when the first stone rose to build the University. She was Underhill when the courts were formed. She had seen glory, she made nations. She crowned Kings and burned their naked daughters. She praised beautiful Queens and drunk the blood of dead new-borns in the name of their beauty. The Fae, the Others, the Ladies and Lords and Changelings, they fear her. Because she knows secrets. She knows things.  
She knows how to turn then into Dust. She knows how to make the Humans invincible; she can give them advantage, leverage, s a l v a t i o n. She can tip the scales of the world one way or the other, towards dark or light. She knows the secrets of Creation. How to breathe life into a lifeless form, how to make the flowers blossom and the streams run wild, how to make the sun shine brighter and the rain fall harder, how to nourish the earth and those who live above it, beneath it, inside it. She wields power enough to spin time backwards. She knows the secrets of Undoing. How to vanquish life force and make a soul grow dim, how to make everything rot in her passage, how to dry the World’s water, how to bring down every building, every stone, how to crumble time forwards to the moment of the Ending.  
She is Evil, to the eyes of the Humans.  
She is Wicked, to the eyes of the Fae.  
For the rest though, the natural, worldly or not, she is Force. She is a dark force, a killing rage, a power of destruction. But she hides light within.  
Do Not Trust The Witch. A boy trusted her once, in times long gone. He trusted her and loved her, and her hair gleamed white and her eyes, just two at the time, her eyes were forest green and soft. He tamed the dark nature, repressed the animalistic desire and she did not feel Hunger. She forgot the need for blood and bone and the desire to suck marrow out of a living writhing spine. But you cannot tame the Witch. She woke one morning and the black hole was open and she swallowed that boy like this one in the Economics Building, she swallowed him Whole and his bones crashed against her rotten teeth like stone again marble, screeching delightful sound.  
She likes the University. There are many boys here and boys are always her weakness. There are girls too of course – girls that feel like flowers- and there are the poets, and the scientists, and the forgotten children some drag along. Yes she likes it here. She will not eat often nor a lot because she doesn’t want to be chased away. She will be good yes yes gooood. Only she is always hungry hungry haangry angry anger. She misses the stench of Death. It’s alright though it’s all okay everything is fine. For the facility is vast, its buildings many, so many places to hide, so many places for the smell of death and rot to take hold of, to perch at, to make a home.  
Do not Trust the Witch. When the radio static is broken by a laugh, when the mirror shows you a lock of white hair that should not appear, when your head gets fuzzy and your gums start bleeding, when you begin to choke on your own blood and teeth are falling out, when your nails turn blue, when you look at your stomach and face a wormhole, run. Turn off the radio. Wipe your mirror, cut your hair, paint your nails, brush your teeth, change your shirt. Speak a prayer, beg any God or entity. Seek a lover or a friend. Do not stay in an empty room, in a dark corridor, in the back of a building, do not take shortcuts, don’t venture into the woods. Don’t read about Victorian Era or before. Do not fixate on the Salem Witch trials, in fact don’t ever mention the incident. Keep going, ignore, pretend you do not see the many rows of eyes and teeth leering at you. You will be okay.


End file.
